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Balancing Peace Through Middle Way
Sunday
The talk explores the Middle Way as a process to achieve lasting peace, emphasizing the balance between inner and outward peace through meditation practices. It critiques the paradox of using war to achieve peace and examines the role of meditation in fostering a balanced approach to views and opinions, addressing inner conflict, and promoting insight over discursive thought. A key focus is on understanding the Buddhist concept of dependent co-arising, which teaches that things do not have inherent existence but arise in dependence on conditions, supporting the realization of the Middle Way as a path to enlightenment and peace.
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Dependent Co-arising (Pratityasamutpada): A fundamental Buddhist teaching that describes how all phenomena arise in dependence on other conditions and do not possess intrinsic existence, crucial for understanding and practicing the Middle Way.
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Middle Way (Madhyamaka): The approach outlined by the Buddha that avoids extremes of existence and nonexistence, reinforcing the balance in views and promoting a vision free from rigid beliefs, fundamental to the realization of peace.
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Meditation Practices: Differentiates between calming practices that promote temporary peace and insight or wisdom meditations that investigate the truth of views and aid in letting go of unskillful attachments.
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Federico Fellini and the Academy Awards: Used to illustrate dependent co-arising through the metaphor of a director’s influence beyond personal presence, emphasizing how conditions create mutual dependencies in events.
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Harold Broadkey's Observation at the Academy Awards: Serves as an example of how dependent co-arising operates in artistic and social settings, showcasing how individual roles are interdependent within broader networks of causation.
AI Suggested Title: Balancing Peace Through Middle Way
Speaker: Tenshin Reb Anderson
Possible Title: Sunday
Speaker: Tenshin Reb Anderson
Possible Title: Sunday
@AI-Vision_v003
homage to the process of peace, homage to all that supports and promotes peace. The word homage for me has a connotation of praise, but it also has the definition of aligning yourself with that which you pay homage to. So, of course, I honor and praise the process of peace and those who devote their lives to it, but also I
[01:03]
align myself with that process, I want to join that process if I can. As you know, many people have expressed an unwavering commitment to peace, to realizing peace, and some of the people who have this commitment to peace also are in a state of very painful differences of view. So, many of us feel an acute pain over the differences of views about what promotes
[02:09]
peace. Some people feel that an invasion of Iraq will promote peace. That's what I've heard. I guess maybe long-term peace, not the initial attack, but then afterwards maybe the world will be a more peaceful place, is the view of some. Others feel that such an invasion would be an immediate, unpeaceful, and harmful act, and would have long-term deleterious effects on the process of peace. And, of course, there's many other nuanced diversions and other views besides the two I just mentioned, but we are now experiencing
[03:13]
painful differences, the pain that arises from different views is prevalent, and the question that arises in my mind is, what does promote, what is the process that promotes peace? In some ways it's easier, a little bit easier, to see what promotes peace inwardly, or for yourself, even though that may not always be so clear either, but is there a relationship between a realizing inner peace and peace between yourself and others? Some of the ancestors of the tradition, in the tradition of the Buddhist, or the Buddhadharma,
[04:25]
have felt that developing inner peace and enlightenment gives rise to a person who also has good relationships, peaceful relationships with others. If one had inner peace but disharmonious relationships with others, and still felt at peace with that, and it didn't bother you, this is not what we mean by Buddha's enlightenment. I have the view that it looks like that the people who seem to have a lot of power in the government, some of them feel that it
[05:26]
probably is necessary to go to war for the sake of peace, it looks like that. I don't know if they really feel that way, but I get that impression. I heard somebody say that the country is kind of 50-50, or balanced, fairly balanced, but that one side has all the power. Just somebody said that, I thought there was something interesting about that comment, and I imagine that those who feel that they have a lot of power, and the United States in general, being apparently such a powerful nation, those who feel in some sense in control or having access to that power, they may feel rather powerful and frustrated. And the people who feel perhaps that they don't have much power in this process, I
[06:30]
hear expressions like, I feel that no matter what I do or no matter what we do, it doesn't matter, that if we express ourselves in opposition to war, the powerful beings will not listen to us. So I sense among people who not only are devoted to peace, but think that, or the view that war is not the way to find peace, that a lot of these people feel, I hear the expression, powerless, and they feel as though their efforts are futile. And I'm not exactly here to tell you that those who are opposed to the war are powerful, I'm not saying that,
[07:32]
and I'm not saying the opposite, I'm just saying what is the process that actually contributes to peace, whatever your view is right now. And I guess I'm of the opinion that the thing that contributes to the process of peace is if somebody gives up their view, that would make a contribution to peace. Giving up your view doesn't mean annihilating it, because it won't be annihilated. Giving up your view means having a balanced attitude to your own views, and if you can have a balanced attitude towards your own views, you will give them up. And also, you might be able to have a balanced attitude towards other people's views if you
[08:35]
have a balanced attitude towards your own. Or, put it personally, I may have a balanced attitude towards other people's views, especially those who differ from me, I may have a balanced attitude towards them if I have a balanced attitude towards mine. Balanced means I don't strongly adhere to my own views, and I don't throw them out the window. My views are like my nose, or my teeth. What's the balanced attitude to my body and my mind which gives rise to views? I'm proposing, I guess, that in my experience this contributes to peace, this balanced attitude, whenever it happens. It's not that I contribute to peace, it's that balanced attitude contributes. And if you're nearby a balanced attitude, you may
[09:42]
be able to partake of that process of balance. So I'm proposing a relationship between meditation and the realization of peace. And of course, peace and meditation, and the type of meditation, or types of meditation which are in accord with peace, I feel. First of all, meditations where one just actually on the surface, in a way, gives up discursive thought. This type
[10:42]
of meditation is immediate, well not immediately, but fairly quickly, when one gives up discursive thought one becomes calm. And such a meditation is an act of compassion, is a compassionate way to be with one's own body and mind. Give up discursive thought, give up thinking about, you know, wandering about in your mind for a little while. Not even necessarily, not suppressing discursive thought, not even suppressing your wandering thoughts, but again, just give them up. Your wandering thoughts are not the same as your views. Like, if you think such and such is right and such and such is wrong, that view is more like your understanding. But, once you have a view that such and such is right, or such and such is wrong, you can
[11:46]
sit and stand and walk around all day talking to yourself, rambling around, wandering around in your head about your views. So you may think such and such is wrong, but then to think about how stupid the people who think that's right are, that's discursive thought. And to think about how you can prove that you really are right and you can show how really wrong they are, and to go through these lines of reasoning, which sometimes might be useful, agitates the mind in the short term, at the moment. Giving up such thoughts and just letting your views arise and cease, your views of what's right and what's proper, what's appropriate, letting them arise and cease, and letting go of your rambling, discursive, running around, wandering thoughts about them, your elaboration on them. As someone said recently, the chains of thought that surround your views and elaborate and
[13:01]
enact upon your views, giving up that, the mind becomes calm. It is an act of compassion to give up this kind of rambling thoughts around your views, and the result will be calm and a very nice state of mind. It's an act of compassion towards your own body and mind, and it also makes you, at least at the time, a nice person to have around. A calm, flexible, buoyant, joyful, relaxed, bright, flexible, workable person, or I should say, person with a body and a mind. But the meditation which is going to actually
[14:03]
give up your views, give up your views are not just what you're thinking about what's going on right now, it's what you think is true. Your views about what you think is really true and how things exist, these are the source of our suffering, and based on these views and beliefs, we use discursive thought in various ways. And if we strongly adhere to our views, we suffer. If we deny our views and pretend we don't have them, we suffer. And out of this suffering and attachment to our views, we do inappropriate, unskillful acts which do not promote peace. I propose that to you. The process of peace will be developed not just by calming ourselves down through calming practice, but through insight practice, to look at our views and to see what they are and to examine them and find out what is actually true, which includes giving up our current views.
[15:14]
So, the type of meditation which revolutionizes the person, which makes the person, someone who is in accord with the process of peace, is what we call insight or wisdom meditations, and those meditations are not just to give up your discursive thought, but actually to use discursive thought to guide your attention, to help you pay attention to what's happening moment by moment in such a way as to promote a penetrating vision of the true way that what's happening is, or the true way that things are happening. When we see the true way, that gives rise
[16:32]
to peace and freedom and enlightenment. It's a wisdom practice. The other type of meditation is a compassion practice. They go together, but the compassion practice by itself does not necessarily include the vision of the way things actually are. So, the Buddha way things are, that brings calm, peace, liberation and enlightenment. It makes the one who sees into an enlightened being in the world of phenomena. And the Buddha said that the vision,
[17:37]
the vision which is not a view, but it's a vision which is free of all views, the vision which he realized, which gives rise to peace, is a vision which you call the middle way. The middle way is, one way to describe it is, it's the way things are which is in the middle of various extreme views of the way they are. And the way Buddha introduces the middle way, sometimes, is that the Buddha says the middle way that things are is that
[18:39]
they are dependently co-arisen, they arise in dependence on things other than themselves. But, as I've been talking for the last couple of months, an elaboration or an unfolding of the teaching of the middle way is that the Buddha teaches that the dependent co-arising of your experience right now is maybe the middle or the central way that what's happening is, namely that what's happening arises in dependence on things other than themselves, but there's two other characteristics of what's happening which need to be pointed out in
[19:42]
order to understand dependent co-arising. So dependent co-arising is really, you can say, is really Buddha's description of how things are happening and how things exist, but in order to understand that, there's further teachings which pertain to the dependent co-arising of things, which help you understand dependent co-arising and realize it. And realizing dependent co-arising with these other two aspects that pertain to it is realizing the middle way. And the other two aspects are, one's called the merely imaginary aspect, and the other one's called the thoroughly established way that things are, or, you know, the perfected
[20:47]
way that things are. Because when we look at what's happening, what we generally do is we don't actually see directly, we don't generally see directly how things are arising in dependence on other things. We tend to see the thing as though it were there on its own, like when you look at a person you don't see all the tentacles of causation that come together and support disappearance. We don't generally see that, we see the person, we don't see the person's conditions, but actually the person is nothing in addition to the conditions which create the person. But we tend to think that there's something there. We know that people depend on conditions, but we think that if you took
[21:51]
away the conditions there'd still be something left. It looks like that. It looks like there's actually something there that depends on conditions, rather than the person is nothing in addition to the conditions which produce them, and none of the conditions that produce the person are the person, that the person is not one of the conditions that produces the person. However, we project an imaginary kind of like thing there that actually is there on its own, we do that, and when we do that we can see actually something there, because without projecting this imaginary thing on events, this imaginary self or substance onto things, then we just see everybody we looked at, we would just see this brilliant set of conditions.
[22:53]
You just see everybody you meet, you just see conditions, conditions, like conditions up the, you know, conditions, like that's what you'd see if you could see the Pinnacle Arising, but you can't. So we make a nice little, what do you call it, portable version of it, nice little, that's there, that little, that person. So we're not saying, Buddha is not saying the person isn't there, it's just that the person, the way they appear is a combination of the way the person is and this nice little packaging job that our mind does on them, so we can reach over and touch them, and you know, give them milk or get milk from them, which is very important to us. Talk to them, yeah, also, yeah, in order to talk to them or to talk about them, we need to sort of like put this little package around them, because we don't know how to talk about the net of causation that contributes to each person at each moment. So it's very convenient we do this projection, but it blurs,
[23:59]
obscures what's actually going on, so we have to hear the Buddha's teaching about that in order to understand the Pinnacle Arising. Once we understand how we obscure what's actually happening, we have a chance to meditate on that process of obscuration, and as we meditate on the process of obscuration, to stop believing that things are what we're projecting on them, and actually see that not only are we not projecting on it anymore, but actually the projection just isn't there, that it's actually absent, and when we see the absence, then we'll understand the middle way, because seeing the absence is seeing the way things ultimately are, it's seeing things in a way that purifies our mind of our views, then we are in the path, we are in the channel, we are in the road, we are
[25:13]
in the way, we are on the course of the middle way to peace, that is peace and freedom and enlightenment. I'm saying this over and over so you'll learn it, I'm saying it week after week so we'll learn it, but I'm also now saying that in practically speaking, for the rest of this talk, I'd like to emphasize the first, the central aspect of this meditation on the middle way, this meditation which is supposed to give rise to peace, and the central meditation is on dependent co-arising, or the other dependent character of everything you meet, everything that happens to you, everything that comes to you, everything that arises in you,
[26:13]
and everything that ceases in you has this other dependent quality, has this dependently co-arisen quality, and the way that other dependent quality really is, is the middle way, because the way it really is, is that the projection of self onto this thing is absent. But in order to see that again, we have to become more and more steady in our meditation so that every time we meet an event, meet a being, meet a feeling, meet a thought, we remember the teaching that this thing is not produced by itself, it is actually, there's nothing there that makes the thing itself. The thing has no essence,
[27:19]
nothing there that produces itself. We listen to that teaching and learn, which is pretty difficult to bring that teaching to each thing we meet, each person, and when someone's being really nice to us or being kind of crabby to us, we sometimes forget the meditation and grasp them for what they appear to be, grasp them for their loveliness, their beauty, grasp them for their nastiness, skip over the meditation of this event, this appearance of a nasty person, this is an other dependent, it has an other dependent quality. We sometimes forget to remember that when we see the manifestation of, quotes, nastiness, even though maybe everyone agrees that, yes, that's a good word for this, still, we need to start by grounding
[28:22]
ourselves in, yes, yes, yes, it's nasty, but we have to remember this nastiness is not produced by itself, it's under the influence of things other than nastiness. And this meditation is kind of hard for us to learn, so that's what I am trying to encourage, is the learning of meditation on dependent co-arising, which is the beginning of meditation on the middle way. I thought I might mention that the middle way, the word way, or path, that's used in the Buddha way, when we say Buddha way, that sometimes is called Buddha Marga. Marga is the word that is often translated as way.
[29:28]
There is another word, I think, which is patipat, patipat, I think, which also means path. But when it comes to using the word Marga, Marga is an interesting word, it means all those things like path, road and so on that I mentioned, channel, it also means usage, Marga means usage, style, method, the middle method, the middle style, the middle usage, the middle custom, the middle path, but Marga also means singing and dancing, the middle dancing, the which is the path of peace. What's the middle singing and the middle dance? What's the middle path? It starts by meditating on everything you meet has other dependent character, which
[30:35]
means also everything you meet is an actual essencelessness, everything you meet is an example of no essence, and what type of no essence is it? It has no essence in terms of producing itself. This is the beginning meditation and this meditation is the fundamental upon which other meditations will be based. So I'm studying tango, I'm trying to learn the middle tango, and yesterday I went to a tango class, and not the teacher, but one
[31:44]
of the, kind of a teacher, but anyway, one of the assistant teachers in the class, at the beginning class, she boldly said, would everyone please join hands in a circle, and then she said some things like, you know, I want to ask you to think of peace and try to be a way that will promote peace today and every day. Whatever you do, please meditate on peace. And she asked people to close their eyes for a little while, meditate in peace, holding hands in a circle in the tango class, and I didn't close my eyes because of, you But I did meditate on peace. And while I was meditating on peace, various things happened, you know, various things
[33:05]
dependently co-arose, and I don't think I did too good a job of remembering to meditate on the other dependent character of the things that were arising while I was standing there supposedly meditating on peace. For example, the thought crossed my mind, well, you know, I'm paying for this class, is this going to be like no teaching, just going to stand here and like… So such a thought can arise in a person. Can you imagine that that might arise in somebody, at least a miser? But I don't know if I… I don't really think… I must say I don't remember that. Okay, now, what's the other dependent character of this thought? How did this thought, you know, who's timing this meditation on emptiness or meditation
[34:08]
on peace thing? Who's timing this? How long is it going to go on? You know, each one of those… those are things that happen to people, right? I didn't make that thought arise, but it arose. But was I meditating on how I didn't make it arise and how she didn't make it arise and how they didn't make it arise, but in some sense it was under the influence of many conditions and it arose and I didn't really remember to meditate on that at the time. I didn't say, oh good, now we can… a meditation session not just on peace, but what is conducive to peace. The person next to me also had her eyes open and she was looking around and she was like looking at me, so I looked at her. And she looked like she was going to say something during the silent meditation on peace. I felt
[35:17]
like she was having trouble restraining herself. I actually thought she was going to say, you should close your eyes. She said close your eyes. And then I was going to have to explain to her, you know. Then when the peace circle was ended with some final admonitions to continue the meditation, she turned over to me and she said, I think she said, I want him taken down. Or, I want him taken out. I think she said down. And I assumed she meant Saddam.
[36:24]
I didn't say, do you mean Saddam? And then there might have been a thought that arose in me like, hmm, or wow. But anyway, I just listened to it. And then I asked her to dance. And I don't remember when she said it, but I think either right away or when we finished, she said, well, I guess I'm not, what, banished or something for expressing myself. The Middle Way starts out anyway. It looks at the beginning. The beginning meditation
[37:50]
of the Middle Way is to dance with the people that you disagree with, or something like that, to dance with them, unless you disagree with dancing, and then dance with that. And I didn't think, oh, I'm going to practice the Middle Way now. I just felt like, well, what's the thing to do with this person now? Don't make her feel like the peaceniks are jerks and hate her. And also, again, this woman said peace. She didn't say what form when she said, think about peace, she didn't say what that meant. But this woman saying, I want him taken down, I guess she thought that talking about peace is antithetical to taking him down. I don't know. And then she said, well, you know, I want peace, but first of all, let's take him down, then let's have peace. Let's have a little bit of not peace,
[38:52]
just gouge that out, gouge that out, and then we can have peace. Don't sometimes we think that way? Let's take care of this and then we'll calm down. I mean, we can't calm down with this, let's get rid of this. Now, I feel much better now. I've killed that mosquito. When I am studying something, usually, then everything I see is included in that study. That's generally the way it is for me.
[39:58]
And I'm not saying you should be like that, or that you are like that, but I think sometimes other people are like that, too. Like, I don't know what. Now, everybody probably noticed those new Volkswagens, right? Those new versions of the Volkswagen Beetle. Did you see them? Who didn't notice those new Beetles? Anybody? Who did not? Rosie, you didn't? Yeah, the recent one. The recent one. Did you notice that new version of it? Would you show me your car, Michael? Anyway, a lot of people noticed it. That's not a very good example, but if somebody gave you a car, you know, some kind of, I don't know what car, some version, some Honda or something, like a Honda Civic of a certain color, a certain model, a certain year, you might say, well, that's nice, and you might never have noticed one before, and then suddenly when you're driving around you see them everywhere. Ever
[41:10]
had that experience? Or if you're looking to buy one, you know, you see them everywhere. And I remember I often use the example of when my daughter was learning to speak English and Chinese, she would be studying one word usually for a while, so like she'd be learning dog, right? And then she would like, once she sort of got what a dog was, she would try it out on the universe. Once she sort of got the first course, then she would see how many times she could confirm that association. And she would see dogs everywhere, you know? She'd see dogs, we'd be driving down the street, she'd see like living dogs, but she'd see dogs in people's windows in their houses, she'd see dogs in people's cars, she'd see dogs on people's shirts, she'd see dogs in magazines, she'd see dogs, almost constantly
[42:12]
she could see dogs. And when she pointed it out, I could see them too, but I hadn't noticed them because I wasn't studying dogs. And probably, you know, a professional dog surgeon or dog doctor or dog pedicurist or dog barber, they would probably like notice dogs, notice dog haircuts and dog toenails because they're studying it. They might, unless they didn't like their study. But when you're first learning something, you're into it and you notice it everywhere. So when you're meditating on dependent co-arising, it's very much like that because, except in this case, it means that every single thing you see, you notice it, without exception, because not everything is a dog, but everything is dependently co-arisen. So once you start doing this meditation, you're lucky if you actually see it all the time, because it does
[43:18]
apply to everything you see. And then if you don't see it, you just slip into meditation, you forgot. Which is something to notice, and if you want to go back to it, and remember, what you're looking at has another dependent character, and it is an essencelessness in terms of self-production. It's teaching you, everything's in this way, because you hear this teaching and apply it, then everything's an opportunity to learn this teaching. So then I see it everywhere. So here's some places I saw it. There's a supplement to the New Yorker called, The New Yorker Goes to the Movies, which means New Yorker articles often go to the movies, New Yorker articles often become movies. There's one really great New
[44:21]
Yorker article that's going to be made into a movie. It's this great short story about this high school teacher that has a student, you know, and the teachers aren't supposed to have sexual relationships with their students, right? But this student wants to have a sexual relationship with his teacher, but I think she's underage at the point of this story happening, I'm not sure. Does anybody remember the story? Anyway, it's a, what do you call it, an Anglo-American male teacher and then this African-American female student, and she's a senior, she might be 18 but we don't know, I didn't know, but anyway, she likes him and she's like, she's an event, like other people. She's a dependently co-arisen phenomena and she relates to this guy in a very, she's described as relating to him
[45:26]
in a very deep way, seems very deep, and she invites him over to her house to meet her parents, and I really like that scene where she meets, where he meets, the teacher meets the student's parents, and I don't remember if I got this right, but I think, you know, he goes over and has dinner at the student's house, right? This is not necessarily against the mores of our society at this time, no sexual contact with him so far, and, I mean, no, nothing gross anyway, like kissing or hugging, handshaking, nothing like that. But she's not really flirting with him, she's more like, hey man, I'm here, get used to it. Ever heard of destiny? So she invites him over to dinner to meet
[46:38]
her parents and I think her father and mother sit down with him at the table and said, I understand my daughter wants to marry you. You know, what do you think about that? So he has, you know, he's kind of, but he has a little trouble relating to this directness, and anyway, things go like that, and this is going to be made into a movie, this little story of their relationship. Like he's trying to like, you know, be really, you know, what do you call it, careful and honest and, you know, you feel that, and her parents are like, really like, they're really used to being honest, and they're like really honest
[47:42]
with him. It's a great thing. Anyway, that's going to the movies, and so this little supplement about these articles going to the movies, and then they have little scenes from their various Oscar shows, and they're all kind of good, and this one I thought I'd read to you, although it's probably not too good to read it, but here goes. This is written by a guy named Harold Broadkey, and this took place at the 1993 Academy Awards, during which Federico Fellini accepted an honorary Oscar, and this is written by somebody. Who
[48:52]
appeared. Do you know who that is, Rosie? She's kind of an elderly lady, who used to be young. So, first Sophia Loren appeared. She was wearing a version of what, of the, can't see it, type of thing that Elizabeth Taylor was wearing. She was wearing a blank type of thing that Elizabeth, what? It's something like a gown. What she was wearing was something like what Elizabeth Taylor was wearing. Then she introduced Marcello Mastroianni. Do you know who that is, Rosie? He's a star in a lot of Fellini's, you know who Fellini
[50:04]
is. So, Sophia Loren introduces Marcello Mastroianni in a supporting role to her own diva grandeur. Then there was the Driri montage, a Driri montage, the Driri montage, yeah, and then Fellini appeared. What a sly-eyed, wrinkled, commanding face. What a sense, oh excuse me, what a scene stealer. Does anybody have reading glasses? Do you have reading glasses? This is not happening by my own power. What a sly-eyed, wrinkled, commanding face.
[51:22]
What a scene stealer. With his first response to Loren, cutting into her speech, telling her drollly and commandingly that she could kiss him, and then moving his head, he doused her in darkness. He erased Mastroianni. He imposed his improvisational timing and his wit and his intelligence in a dominant yet modest and kingly yet Fellini-esque way. His eyes did not stay put but kept moving in a non-star-like swiveling scans. A movie actress told me that they teach movie actresses and actors not to move their eyes, not to blink,
[52:23]
you know. This is not what stars do. That's not their job. This is the director. Swiveling scans, locating cameras, judging the temperature of the audience. Fellini stole the Oscar show. He seemed to prove that the artist mind is, in a way, king, and that the director has final power because he or she is finally not so self-consciously caught in a set persona as a star is. I mean, his is not the famous face. Even in terms of expression, he was not an actor, quite. His eyes never did behave for long. He was like a ghost of stardom, and he was brief. His whole bit was seamless charm and grace, culminating with his thanking
[53:30]
his wife, Giulietta Messina, whom he told to stop crying in a slightly climactic voice. And then the cameras swung. Then, to the star's face, Giulietta, the star's face, she was crying. His performance flowed into credibility in the anecdotal greatness with the real thing, her tears. He entered human credibility through her sweetly magnetic sentiment, her crumpled joy, none of which was he capable of projecting. He needed a star. But there was a meditation
[54:32]
on dependent co-arising. He wasn't a star. He was playing the role of the director. He was the director. Even then, in receiving the awards, he was the director of the event. And yet, it doesn't work except through things other than him. We need to meditate on this point. Life is like riding in a boat. Though in the boat, one works the sail and rudder in the pole, the boat carries me. The boat carries one, and one is nothing without the boat.
[55:46]
Riding in the boat, one even causes the boat to be a boat. One is nothing without the boat and riding in the boat, one causes the boat to be a boat. This is the point to meditate on. At this very moment, the boat is the world. Even the sky, the water, the shore, all have become the circumstances of the boat. For this reason, our life is causing to live. It is life's causing us to be ourselves. When riding in a boat, the mind and body
[56:59]
are all the working of the boat. We that are life, life that is we, are the same way. Life can be likened to the time when one person is sailing in a boat. On this boat, I am operating the sail. I have taken the rudder. I am pushing the pole. At the same time, the boat is carrying me and there is no I beyond the boat. Life is what I am making
[58:09]
it and I am what life is making me. We that are life, life that are we. Can we meditate on this point? We make life, life makes us. We make what life is for us, what life is makes us, what we are. Can we meditate on this point? So this is the basic meditation of the Middle Way. And it's hard to be consistent at it because it's, what do you call it, it's
[59:13]
really kind of a new trick. Have you been meditating on this consistently yet? It seems like a new thing for most people. Wisdom practice is a new thing for most people. For young people it's a new thing, for middle aged people it seems to be a new thing, and for senior people it seems to be a new thing. But it seems to be the fundamental wisdom meditation in the Buddhist tradition. It's not the whole story, we have to go beyond this, further dimensions of this practice, but this is the basic one. This is the grounding one. We need to learn how to do it, I think, in order to realize peace and freedom and our
[60:14]
most skillful activity in that world of peace and freedom, to bring the world of peace and freedom to others. But it's hard, hard to keep steady at it and then be balanced in it. It's difficult. So, in the beginning, learning it, what you said up to that point, but you don't ignore
[61:25]
what's coming up. You apply it to the next thing. You apply the teaching to the next thing. And if you can't do that, then you haven't yet learned how to do it. But you don't apply it in general, you apply it to the specific thing. So when you see something else, when you recognize a new...
[61:47]
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